US Army veteran and convicted murderer freed in Venezuela prisoner swap: Officials

One of the 10 Americans released from Venezuela in a prisoner swap last week was convicted of killing three people in Spain and was serving a 30-year sentence in a Venezuelan prison before his release, Spanish and Venezuelan officials told ABC News.

Dahud Hanid Ortiz, 54, was convicted in Venezuela of killing three people in a Madrid law office in 2016, according to the Spanish Interior Ministry and the Venezuelan vice president’s office.

Spanish authorities said Ortiz stabbed to death two female employees and a client of the law firm in June 2016. Authorities said Ortiz was looking for the lawyer who ran the office, who was away at the time.

The Venezuelan government opted to try Ortiz, an American-Venezuelan dual national, in Venezuela rather than fulfill an extradition request form Spain because Venezuela's constitution prohibits the extradition of Venezuelan-born citizens.

Speaking on Venezuelan TV on Thursday, Venezuela’s Justice Minister Diosdado Cabello said U.S. officials were told about Ortiz’s conviction but said they still wanted him released.

The U.S. was aware of Ortiz’ past but made the decision to bring him out in the swap anyway, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.

Ortiz served in the U.S. Army for about 17 years as an enlisted soldier, starting in 1995, and then served more than four years as an officer, an Army spokesperson said. He deployed to Kuwait and Iraq and left the Army in October 2015, nine months before the murders were committed.

A defense official said Ortiz was court-martialed "and dismissed from the Army" in 2015.

As part of a previous 2023 prisoner swap between the U.S. and Venezuela, Ortiz was supposed to be sent to Spain to be tried for the 2016 killings -- but that never materialized.

Ortiz, who had been arrested in Venezuela in 2018, was sentenced on Jan. 9, 2024 in Caracas.

His status or whereabouts in the United States was not immediately clear.

The current swap involved the exchange of 10 Americans held in Venezuela for the release of more than 200 Venezuelan migrants who had been deported from the U.S. and sent to El Salvador's CECOT prison.

The U.S. official said the administration’s focus was getting Americans out of Venezuela’s notorious prisons.

All told, eight of the 10 Americans freed last week were officially classified by the U.S. government as "wrongfully detained." Ortiz was not classified as such, the official said.